Indiana woman missing since 1974 found living under alias

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LAUREL, Ind.– Authorities found a woman who went missing from the town of Laurel, Indiana 42 years ago.

Lula Gillespie-Miller was 28 years old when she gave custody of her three children to her parents and vanished. Her family’s only contact since then was a letter postmarked from Richmond, Indiana in 1975.

Two years ago, the Doe Network, a volunteer organization that investigates missing persons cases, reached out to Indiana State Police Det. Sgt. Scott Jarvis to look into the young mother’s disappearance.

According to WCPO, Jarvis located a deceased woman in an unmarked grave in a Richmond and had the body exhumed for DNA. It wasn’t a match.

Jarvis continued to investigate and learned of a woman “with similarities to Lula Gillespie-Miller who had lived in Tennessee in the 1980s, then later in Texas,” NBC News reported. Texas Rangers knocked on the woman’s door on Thursday and the now-69-year-old admitted her true identity.

Authorities said Gillespie-Miller did not commit a crime so they are not releasing her new name or her exact location.